A few months ago, most of the political observers expressed their joyful expectation of a future black-green government, at the latest with the election of Armin Laschet as CDU party chairman, that seemed to be a foregone conclusion. The soaring of the Greens in the opinion polls only raised the question of whether black-green might even become green-black. Whatever the outcome, one thing was certain: you don't have to rely on the FDP as the majority funder again. After all, it had already disrupted the cordial agreement between the Union and the Greens four years ago.
In March such a coalition would have won a whopping 55 percent majority of the vote.
Even after the temporary crash of the Union parties, it would still have been enough for 50 percent in May.
But since then our hopeful coalition members have been going downhill.
The black-green coalition is thus the first coalition to be voted out of office before it was elected.
You have to do that first.
Surely they had already been looking forward to the formation of a government, including the inevitable question of who could become what.
"16 years of Kohl and 16 years of Merkel are simply too much"
With the miraculous resurgence of the Social Democrats, who had long been written off, it turned out to be the most exciting election campaign of the past decades. The cabaret artist Urban Priol described the current confusion of many voters: What does it mean for the coalition options if I vote for a party? A Green voter could suddenly lie in the coalition bed with the left party chairman Janine Wissler, while an FDP voter could elect Olaf Scholz as Chancellor. Even a die-hard leftist like Priol could get a headache. After all, he had to deal with a supposedly invincible opponent all his professional life. He would have to digest its disappearance first. He discussed possible coalitions with his two co-commentators on Sandra Maischberger's broadcast.
The world journalist Susanne Gaschke considered the reactivated specter of a left majority to be possible, but her ARD colleague Michael Stempfle ruled her out. However, this debate rather babbled on, only Priol's cabaret remarks about the long-forgotten “future team” of the CDU candidate for chancellor caused a certain revival at a late hour. The political work of the CSU sentiment cannon and digital expert Dorothee Bär in two Merkel cabinets is really no reason to entrust the Union with the modernization of the country. Priol put his finger in the wound: In the last few meters of this election campaign, the intellectual and personal exhaustion of the Union became clear. Priol, born in 1961, therefore certainly spoke from the heart of large parts of his generation:"16 years of Kohl and 16 years of Merkel are simply too much."
Of course, not everyone will see it that way. For the Greens and the Union, the end of Ms. Merkel's term of office was ultimately synonymous with the formation of a coalition. Not least because of this, the CSU chairman Markus Söder fought so doggedly for the candidacy for chancellor. For him it was synonymous with the last chance not to have to leave office as the Bavarian state father after two legislative periods. After all, nobody could have suspected the crash in the polls. So the representatives of the coalition, which had been voted out without an election, met at Ms. Maischberger's. Markus Blume (CSU) and Katharina Schulze (Greens) were irritated and desperate about the respective polls. Suddenly they had to simulate a dissent that does not play a role in political practice.